Started out [on] the Bike this morning but after seeing some [illegible] the rain came on at Heathfield + I had to come home + take the car in which I went to Haining, Whitmuirhall +c. At the latter I vaccinated the boy Cowan1 who is at Winchester School. I met the Father2 who was riding + whose horse (which he was holding at the gate leading up to Gala Rigg) bolted from being frightened by the car. He introduced himself + told me I had attended him once at Whitmuirhall when he had got [illegible]. I was in the house all afternoon + made out my income tax return which gave me income for 1922-23 at £1223. 7. 2. gross. It was very wet all afternoon + evening. Wind S.E. to S.
1 Alexander Cowan (see footnote 2) and his wife Margaret Annie Logan Home, who had married in Edinburgh in July 1903, had two sons Christopher Home Cowan (1908-1999) and Charles Anthony Cowan (1914-) and this could just about refer to either.
2 Alexander Gillespie Cowan (1873-1961), papermaker and farmer, was tenant of Whitmuirhall after the Dunlop family flitted in early 1923. He didn’t move far thereafter. His death was recorded 17 August 1961 at Eastfield, Bowden (not Melrose as some records imply), just along the road from Whitmuirhall.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 